Maurice Obstfeld is new chief economist of the IMF

Obstfeld is the former chair of the department of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Like Blanchard, Obstfeld’s background is largely as an academic economist.

He is the co-author of two textbooks on international economics—Foundations of International Macroeconomics with former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff, and International Economics with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz.

Here is the FT coverage, here is the IMF announcement, and here is Obstfeld’s home page.  He wrote this on the eurozone.  Overall I would say this reflects the continuing preeminence of MIT-style macroeconomics in the current policy community, his MIT Ph.d. is from 1979 and his work has been very much in that vein.